Oinari Academy
by Grimrose Eilwynn
Summary: In a world where Utatane Koharu has control of the training of young kunoichi, Hinata, Sakura, and Ino's Academy years go somewhat differently.
1. Chapter 1

**Oinari Academy**

1.

The Hyuuga were prestigious. They had pride, and they would only accept the best. That, really, was the problem.

Konoha was one of the five great Hidden Villages in the Elemental Countries, and the Hyuuga were one of the top two ninja clans within Konoha. A wealthy, powerful family, they were aware of their own greatness and expected much from themselves.

The Hyuuga were separated into two groups, the main family and then the branch family retainers. Hinata's father was the head of the main family; his younger twin brother was the head of the branch family. A simple accident of a few minutes of birth had separated them irrevocably forever. The elder sibling became head of the family, while the younger sibling was branded upon the forehead with what was called "a Caged Bird seal", which could be activated by any main family member at any moment and cause untold devastation on the brain.

Hinata could remember, once, in one of her earliest memories, this seal being activated. Her father had been putting her through moves out on the Hyuuga clan sparring mat, when she was only a few years old - the Hyuuga clan specialized in a style of taijutsu hand to hand called Jyuuken, or Gentle Fist, which involved devastating soft, graceful attacks to vulnerable anatomical areas, and they expected even their youngest members to be able to perform it, something Hinata did not realize was peculiar until later on in life.

So she was going through the movements, but she was clumsy. She kept tripping up. With calm patience, her father did the moves with her over, and over again - until the air began to get heavy. It was at this point that her father's head shot up and he glared at his twin brother, who was sitting nearby with his own son. The twin brother screamed out and fell to the ground, his forehead seal glowing, twisting and writhing as though he was having some sort of seizure. His son Neji, Hinata's elder cousin, fell back fearfully, watching with big eyes.

At last, the seizure faded away, Hinata's uncle gasping and drooling on the floor. Neji and Hinata stood straight and stiff in the terrified silence. It was the first time Hinata had ever been afraid of her father, who was tall and dignified, his eyes dark with fury.

"Be warned," he told his shaking, prone brother. "I will not tolerate that again."

It was only later that Hinata learned the heaviness in the air had been killing intent. Her uncle had been directing the killing intent at Hinata herself, who had never been quite as naturally good at Jyuuken as her cousin was, or even as her younger sister would later turn out to be. She was clumsy, she tripped and slipped and always felt like she was messing up. Hinata was not coordinated in a world where one had to be coordinated to survive. As she grew older, she realized - though he said nothing of the kind - that her father wished her younger sister or her cousin were the clan heir instead.

But as time passed, nothing changed. Hinata heard whispers from the clan elders sometimes, as she grew older and shyer and no better at Jyuuken, that her father was "delaying the inevitable." But Hinata thought nothing of this.

In her own eyes, her father was the ultimate protector, unbreakable.

Her mother helped with this. Hinata's mother was a beautiful, soothing presence, always tranquil and peaceful. She tended to the compound garden herself, and was gentle, demure, and kind. Hinata looked nothing like her mother - her face was round where her mother's was slim, and her hair was short and blue-black where her mother's was long and pure dark. In addition to being clumsy and shy, Hinata was plain; she had not inherited her mother's beauty. But her sister Hanabi looked just like their mother, and Hinata loved her for it. The wonderful thing about Hinata's parents was that it was an arranged intra-clan marriage, and yet there was love between them. Her father, so cold and dignified, always softened around her beautiful and gentle mother. He could have taken other wives, but he was happy with his first.

Hinata tried hard to be like her mother in ways other than physical appearance, inspired. Her mother taught her grace and etiquette lessons, and she became from an early age soft spoken, diplomatic, and kindly feminine.

There was a great feast for Hinata's third birthday, and she went to sleep in her vast set of rooms on her pallet peaceful and tranquil, with all being right in the world. She was a princess in a vast, beautiful compound, destined to be homeschooled in ninja training as most female members of ninja clans were, with loving, appropriate parents and a little sister who did not resent her. Her father, she felt, would protect all of them, even Neji and his father, from the bad things forever. He would only hurt Neji and his father in defense of his own family, Hinata felt; so admiring her mother's kindness, she also admired her father's strength, and felt he would only use it appropriately, where he must.

She believed this with the fervency only a young child could. When she grew up, Hinata wanted to be just like her parents. She wanted to take the very best from both people.

She woke to a hand clapping over her mouth and nose, large and rough and male. She screamed, but she was muffled, strangled, from behind, and no one heard her. She was lifted upward, bound and gagged roughly, and stuffed into a cloth bag. One moment she was in cold night air, the next she was inside heavy cloth darkness, her mouth yanked shut by a rag from behind and her hands and feet being cut by ninja wire.

She rattled around, staring terrified at the mesh lining of the bag, as she felt her captor creep silently through the black, sleeping Hyuuga clan compound. She still had not seen her attacker, though she had gathered he was a male adult, and with those silent footsteps, he had to be a ninja. She had no idea where she was, no way to tell where he was taking her.

Then there was a shout and she was thrown to the ground. There was a man's grunt, followed by a scream and the smell of blood. She lay still, horrified, as she heard shouts and chaotic footsteps. Then the bag was thrown backward, and she lay exposed to the cold night air. She stared up in primal fear - at her mother's face.

She relaxed. They hadn't made it outside the compound.

"Hinata-chan! Are you alright?" her mother cried, shaken, hugging her very tightly, as little Hanabi and Neji stood back staring with big eyes. The whole clan was gathered around them. But not everyone was looking at Hinata. Some people were standing around the dead assailant.

He had a ninja headband from the Hidden Village of Kumo, in Lightning Country. Blood spurted out of his ears and nose, gurgling up out of his open mouth from within his chest. Hinata's father stood, covered in blood, pale and icy. He had dealt two killing Jyuuken blows in a needless show of violence, one to the brain and one to the heart.

"He was a diplomat," observed a clan elder at last, blinking heavy lidded eyes down at the dead Kumo ninja. "They were signing a treaty with Konoha today."

"He had kidnapped my daughter!" Hinata's father snapped. "You know how much they've always wanted to study our eyes!"

The Hyuuga clan's Jyuuken taijutsu abilities hinged around their Byakugan eyes, a doujutsu that could help them see through anything - like anatomy - and also across enormous distances. It ran in their bloodline; only they had this eye related ability. It had left them with silvery eyes that contained a permanent and irrevocable lack of visible pupils. Their irises were almost unintelligible from the whites around their eyes. Hinata had the Byakugan just as much as any of them did.

They had wanted, she realized with a thrill of terror, to kidnap the Hyuuga heiress, kill her back in Kumo, rip the eyes out of her head, and study them. She bent over and threw up all over the grass. Her mother's warm hand rubbed her back soothingly. Her father glanced over at her once, but his face was tight and defensive now as he stared at the judgment of his fellows.

"Oh, Hiashi," said Hinata's Uncle Hizashi, "I can understand why you did what you did. But you're in a lot of trouble."

Hinata became very sick and was confined to her bed for several days. Only her mother and her sister visited her. Her father never appeared. Hinata asked questions of her branch guards, her mother, her sister, but though everyone looked very worried, no one would tell her what was going on until Neji walked into her quarters one day.

She brightened from her vast bed. "Neji-nii-san!"

But he looked cold. She had never seen the normally smiling Neji look that way before.

"... I thought you should know," he offered softly after a moment, "your father's head has been demanded by the Hidden Village of Kumo." Hinata gasped. "But -" And here, Neji's face worked furiously. "As the Caged Bird seals the Byakugan upon death, my father's head is going in his place." Tears stung Neji's eyes despite his cold, furious expression.

Hinata was struck silent for a long time.

"... I am sorry, Neji-nii-san," she whispered at last.

Neji's face twisted. "You should know, Hinata-sama," he said, "that just as it is my fate to always be a branch member, just as it is my father's fate to die in place of his twin, you too have a fate." He spat the word. "Main family members are not exempt! I may be fated to always be a branch family member despite being strong, Hinata-sama, but you are fated to always be weak despite being a main family member."

Hinata sat there in silence as Neji left.

When Hinata could finally leave her bedchambers again, her world had changed. Uncle Hizashi was gone, Neji would only address her as "Hinata-sama," and her mother was sick. All of the stress had struck her ill, and she lay bedridden for several days. Hinata was not allowed to visit her, but she could hear her mother moaning every time she passed by her set of rooms.

One day, Hinata was playing with her sister and Neji walked up to the two of them.

"... Your mother is dead," he offered quietly, and left.

Hanabi immediately started crying, but Hinata just sat there for a long time.

It was then her world changed again. Her father never remarried. But that did not mean her arrangement did not shift. Not only did she miss her mother, but it was as if her mother had provided some unseen bulwark for Hinata against the world. With her mother gone, she began being called into the clan sparring rooms more and more, to show her performances further and further for her father and the clan elders. But it seemed she always fell further and further behind, clumsy till the end.

Neji and Hanabi, on the other hand, got better and better. The chip on Neji's shoulder got heavier; it seemed he always had more to prove. Meanwhile, Hinata's father had become colder. He demanded much, showed little mercy, and while Hanabi thrived under this kind of treatment, Hinata did not.

Hinata also did not like sparring with her cousin or her sister, or with any of her other relatives - she always feared hurting them. She especially could not hit her sister - her sister, who looked so much like their dead mother.

Her sister suddenly became more vicious and aggressive toward her. She was always pushing and hitting Hinata, making her fall, pushing her further and further back. Their father never intervened. "Why are you always trying to hurt me?" Hinata asked her sister one day plaintively after falling back for the third time on the mats.

Hanabi sighed impatiently. "Nee-san," she said, "don't you see what's going on?"

But Hinata did not see, and apparently Hanabi felt no need to enlighten her; she stormed from the mats. Neji, Hinata's father, and the clan elders watched from a distance with veiled eyes, and Hinata felt a strange sense of humiliation rise within her.

Finally, one day, Hinata was called by surprise into the clan sparring room. She walked inside, and found everyone assembled there. Her sister stood in the center of the mat.

"Hinata," said her father in a deep, rumbling voice, his eyes stern, "you will fight your sister."

But this was nothing new for Hinata. She faced her sister across the mat, the signal to begin came, and as usual Hinata did horribly. She was pushed back and pushed back, clumsy and under pressure and afraid to hit her sister; at last her younger sister felled her and arced a knife hand right up close to her heart.

All was still for a moment.

"... Very well," said their father at last, and Hinata could see he was feeling something very strongly for a moment, but she could not tell what it was. "Hanabi is now clan heiress."

Hinata gasped, her heart stopping. Hanabi turned calmly, and bowed, as if she'd expected it all along. "Thank you for the honor, Father," she said, with the kind of calm Hinata had never felt she possessed. Hanabi had grown, without Hinata realizing it.

And all of a sudden Hinata realized she'd been playing in a high stakes game and she hadn't even known there was anything at stake and now she had lost. She had lost horribly.

Everyone filed out of the sparring room. "It is to be expected," Hinata heard one clan elder murmur to another. "Hiashi gave the girl her little sister instead of her cousin, but it was of no use." Then they were all gone, and Hanabi, Neji, and Hinata were alone in the room. Hinata stood slowly, shaken.

Neji walked up to her. "It appears I may have been wrong about your fate, Hinata-sama," he said formally.

Hinata stared at him like he'd just grown six heads.

"Hinata-sama," Neji sighed, "what happened to the last younger sibling of a main family head? How do you think the branch family was created?"

Hinata went cold right down to her heart. The last person with such a position - had been Uncle Hizashi. All the branch members - they were descendants of clan rejects.

"My father will brand me," Hinata whispered in horror. Hanabi just looked at her matter of factly. Hanabi had apparently figured it out years ago - it was why she'd suddenly become more aggressive. She didn't want that fate to be her own.

"Not if he can help it," said Neji clinically, who had a forehead seal himself. "Not after what happened between your father and mine. My father died resenting your father; he won't try that method again in a hurry. No, your father will try to make other arrangements for you. He's been fighting for you all along, you know. Perhaps he will arrange a wealthy civilian marriage for you; that is always an option for girls.

"But Hinata-sama." Neji looked at her seriously, apparently moved by her unusual closeness to his position into more ordinary speech. "He must find an answer quickly. He cannot keep the clan elders at bay forever."

* * *

Sakura probably had more experience of Konoha village itself than a girl from a typical ninja family did. Most girls in established ninja clans, during their youngest years they lived mostly inside their compound, were homeschooled inside their compound, only venturing out as they got older and took the rank test to become official ninja.

Sakura's family lived in a relative shack.

Really, it wasn't a bad house. Just very simple. Two stories, a faded lemonade pink color, no surrounding property. It looked like it had been new once and then its life force had drained away, and it sagged a bit to the side. It was surrounded by a forbidding, rusty, spiked iron fence. Sakura's parents were first generation ninja - her grandparents had been civilians - and though they were technically a ninja clan by law, they could not perform any of the official ninja clan functions. They had not accumulated enough wealth to have their own compound, and her father only could afford the one wife and child.

This meant Sakura ventured out into Konoha a lot, playing with the civilian children. She came to know well the dirt streets lined with green trees, the many colorful white-washed cottages with spiraling lemon, lime, and strawberry colored roofs, the green forests beyond, the great wooden wall surrounding Konoha on all sides, the vast sandstone Hokage monument looming out into the center of it all in the mild weather, carved with the faces of the previous all-male ninja village leaders.

She played barefoot with the civilian children, and this meant she got it from both ends. Her mother, on the one hand, always got annoyed and tight-lipped when she played with the civilian children. "You are above them," she said, she herself a hard, fierce woman who life had dealt a bad hand. Her mother, it seemed, was always frowning, and the lines in her face showed it.

Sakura scowled. "I don't have anybody else to play with," she'd mutter.

The real trouble, however, came when the civilian children and their parents found out that Sakura and her family were technically a ninja clan. "Those Haruno people, they don't know how to be proper ninja," the parents would say disapprovingly.

"My parents know plenty about being ninja!" Sakura would defend angrily, and the parents would just glare at her sideways suspiciously. "They do!" No one believed her.

But the worst thing was that the civilian children she used to be friends with started picking on her. They would surround her as she curled up on the ground, kicking her and shouting jeers at her. "Forehead Girl! Forehead Girl!" they would call, as tears stung Sakura's eyes and she curled herself into a tighter ball, helpless anger choking her.

Sakura's forehead was her most sensitive feature. She had short carnation pink hair and spring green eyes - hence her name - but she had a heart-shaped face, and its wide forehead and pointed chin were both points of self consciousness for her.

The children picked up on that and went right for it. It wasn't long before Sakura felt very ugly indeed. She wanted to stand up to all those people, but then she would be left all alone and anyway how did you stand up to everyone? Without getting in trouble? Sakura was too quiet, too obedient, needed others too much, to make for a rebellious rule-breaker who stood up for herself. Anger only got a person so far, but it was the anger that ate away at her from the inside. The anger, and the self loathing.

They also made fun of her for the books she loved so much, gotten from homeschooling with her parents, always on such a higher level than what they could read themselves - and not because they went to public general ed civilian schools, either. "Nerd," they called her, and this Sakura also took with silent, repressed anger.

"You're not better than us," they would sneer at her. "That's why you wear those poor clothes. Your family doesn't have any more money than ours."

Sakura glared helplessly, her teeth gritted. "That doesn't matter," she forced out. "I'll still become a great ninja!" But inside, she knew they were right.

She came home after being picked on one day, and her dress was torn, her lip and knee bloody. "Sakura!" her mother shouted, aghast, at the door. "What happened?"

"What does it look like?" Sakura muttered resentfully. She could not look her parents in the eye.

"Sakura, you must learn to stand up for yourself," said her mother firmly. "You can't let anyone pick on you as a ninja!"

Sakura's head shot up. "As if I want to be picked on!" she shouted.

Sakura's father looked unusually sober at the kitchen table. He shared a look with Sakura's mother. "This isn't working," he said meaningfully. "She isn't learning anything this way."

Sakura's mother's expression suddenly became veiled. "Sakura," she said, "go upstairs to your room."

Sakura stared between them suspiciously, and then trudged slowly, reluctantly, up to her room. She lay down on her bed and took out a book, paging through it. The recommended reading age range was ten to twelve, but this had never been a problem for Sakura when it came to books and learning.

She heard the shouting begin downstairs, and she sighed. Her parents were always fighting. It had been a bad match. Her father was laidback and easygoing, flirtatious, while her mother was fierce and hard, responsible and jealous, staid. But they both had short tempers.

It was why she spent so much time out of the house, away from home. It seemed they were always shouting horrible things at each other, and only later would Sakura realize this was mostly unique to her family. In her younger years, family was just disagreeable and angry, there for nagging and fighting and nothing else.

At last, she put her book down, curious. She crept out of her bedroom, and crouched to listen on the landing. Her father's voice came.

" - you know we can't teach her here. We have no significant clan skills, and she won't learn how to be a ninja spending her life around civilians. She's not a boy. She can't go to a general ed ninja training Academy and also stay here with us."

"You want to send my daughter away!" her mother shouted, emotional and heated, and Sakura repressed a gasp.

"You know that's not what I want!" her father shouted. "But we don't have a lot of options! We're first generation ninja and we have no abilities; we barely passed the Chuunin middle rank exam! You know Sakura deserves more. Her scores in intelligence and control are off the charts. And anyway, she's not happy here!"

Sakura's mother went silent. "I can't believe we're considering this," she murmured. Then there was a long silence. Sakura waited. Considering what?! she wanted to scream. But there was no answer.

At last, realizing the fight was over, Sakura crept back to her bedroom, numb.

She knew she'd never seen her parents talk about or show any significant clan abilities. But she'd always assumed they'd know what to do when the time came. They were her parents, after all. But apparently they didn't know what to do. They couldn't pass on to her any significant ninja clan abilities, because they had none.

They'd taught her how to channel her chakra, and found that she had "the most precise control I've ever seen," her mother had said, in something like surprised awe. Though Sakura had very little chakra, she could channel what she did have into even the tiniest of spaces. She thought that meant she'd be building to something, some special ability.

Now she considered the frightening possibility that this was all they had to teach her - and if that was true, they themselves could die at any moment on a ninja mission.

Sakura sat down on her bed, angry tears stinging her eyes. Her parents wanted to send her away. But was that such a bad thing? She imagined the rest of her life here stretching out before her, interacting with and being picked on by jealous civilians, never going to a ninja academy, never gaining any significant abilities, always being a low ranked cannon fodder ninja like her parents. Yet she didn't want to give up being a ninja - she dreamed of becoming a powerful fighter.

She felt trapped and hopeless and upset and confused. This was the only home she had ever known. But was it one she wanted to be permanent?

* * *

Ino's father had several wives, and countless children.

They all lived in a clan compound. The Yamanaka were not the Hyuuga or the Uchiha, but they did well. They were a well established Konoha clan. Ino's father had several drinking buddies, and they all had the same lackadaisical, kindly condescending, amused attitude toward women that had started infuriating Ino at a very young age. They all had several wives and children as well, and often the three of them went off on ninja missions together.

But make no mistake, Ino's father was not an alcoholic. On the contrary, he was a measured, even tempered man who worked for the ANBU Black Ops Intel and Torture & Interrogation division. He never talked about what he did at work, and Ino had learned from a young age not to ask. A survivor to the end, she heeded this lesson. She had realized realistically that she probably didn't want to know the details of what her father did for a living, didn't want it to tarnish her image of him.

Ino's father insisted that none of his wives - all of whom he had married from outside the previously small Yamanaka clan - had to work. Ino's mother, his first wife, rebelled against this in a subtle way, by opening up a flower shop that Ino sometimes helped with. It was a genteel enough job, almost a hobby if you spun it the right way, that Ino's father looked the other way.

This was, as far as Ino could tell, her mother's sole sign of rebellion. She was an older, dignified, silent, traditional woman. Her responsibility and even temper, her maturity and acceptance of her lot in life, were what had made her first wife. Ino's father was nothing if not pragmatic.

Ino and her mother rarely spoke outside the flower shop. Ino was nothing like her mother, and in any case, Ino's mother often did not have much to say. She had hidden depths known only to herself; she preferred not to socialize with the world except when she had to. She was, in Ino's eyes, totally and painfully repressed.

Ino didn't get much control from her father either, so she was essentially allowed to run free for several years. The other wives sometimes said that Ino's spoiled lack of control or dedication would come back to haunt her someday. Ino thought they could all go screw themselves.

She was the only child of her father's first wife, and though she had older half siblings, and though she was pretty with short platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes and a desirable oval face, Ino knew her father would have preferred for his first child to be a boy. It was well known: boys went to the Academy, girls lived at home. The separation was obvious from a young age. Ino always had a mysterious sense that she disappointed her father, and instead of making her timid or angry, this frustrated her and made her act out rebelliously in other ways.

Today, she crept up on her older half brother and her two younger half siblings (a boy and a girl). Tenshi and Kaneda, the boys, were picking on the little girl, Ume. She was crying as they snickered and yanked on her pigtails. Ino snuck up behind Tenshi, and kicked him in the butt.

As the eldest, she found him personally responsible for picking on her little sister.

Tenshi yelped, fell head over feet, and landed in the mud and fertilizer out in the center courtyard. He growled and sat upright, glaring at Ino, and Ino grinned. He stood up, charged toward her - and tripped a hidden ninja wire trigger Ino had placed in the courtyard hours ago, which caught him suddenly up in a big net.

"Hey!" he yelled, struggling with the net. "Let me go!"

Ino snickered. Kaneda let out a surprised laugh, Ume looked up smiling through her tears, and all the other children gathered around the courtyard to laugh as well. So did a couple of the younger wives who did not like Tenshi. Then, suddenly:

"Ino!"

The courtyard went silent. Ino turned around, sullen. Her mother was standing there. Her mother was reserved, but her lips pursed with disapproval.

"You disrespect your elder brother, and you disobey and shame your parents," Ino's mother said coldly at last.

In response, Ino stuck out her tongue. She'd defended her little sister and she refused to apologize.

"Your father should see you," said Ino's mother simply. "Come with me."

She turned around, and Ino followed her down the hall into her father's office. Ino's mother entered the office first; there was the murmur of voices for about a minute. Then Ino's mother came out. "You may enter," she said, stepping aside. Ino walked in, passing her. The door slid shut behind Ino, and she stood reluctantly, refusing to be fearful, in the office before her thoughtful, distant father. She stared at the calligraphy scroll hanging behind his head, hands behind her back, trying not to fidget.

And she waited.

"You are always causing trouble, Ino," said her father at last. "You shame me. Why?"

"I was just using the Yamanaka clan powers of craftiness," Ino argued firmly. "If I were a boy, you would not call my actions a dishonor."

"Silence!"

They glared at each other for a moment.

What Ino meant was this. The Yamanaka clan specialized in mind and body control. It was why Ino's blue eyes lacked pupils. She could look into a person, and travel into their mind through her eyes. She could also use these powers to manipulate their bodies, like a spider spinning invisible webs.

Ino's father had mastered these abilities. It was why he worked for the ANBU division that he did. But they required great craftiness to execute properly in a fight.

"There is a world of difference between using those skills on a mission and using them to entrap your brother," said her father.

"He was picking on my little sister. Am I not allowed to defend her?" Ino demanded defiantly.

"Yet you had placed that trap hours ago. You were just waiting for the appropriate person to fall into it," her father pointed out.

Ino went silent, sullen.

Her father sighed. "Ino…" he said.

"It's still because I'm a boy," Ino insisted. "You don't scold my brothers when they fight each other!"

Ino's father looked away. "... Women have a different role in life," he forced out after a moment, and as always, he sounded disappointed.

"Including kunoichi, female ninja?" Ino asked sharply. "Like what I intend to be?"

Her father looked at her meaningfully. "Especially kunoichi, female ninja, like what you intend to be." Ino glared, refusing to be apologetic. Her father's eyes sharpened. "I shall have to teach you a lesson," he said at last. "Leave while I contemplate what that lesson is."

"Ooh, I'm terrified," said Ino with bratty sarcasm, storming out of the office and slamming the door behind her.

"And don't slam doors!" he called fruitlessly after her.

Ino stormed off of the compound and into the nearby flower shop, where her mother stood behind the counter. "What did your father say?" Ino's mother asked reservedly.

"He said he's going to 'teach me a lesson'." Ino made a face. "Whatever that means."

"Oh, Ino," said her mother. "You forget your father's role within our village. This will not exactly consist of extra training sessions when your time for private schooling comes.

"Be careful. Your father's lessons are never kind."


	2. Chapter 2

2.

Hinata was called into her father's office one day. She walked in to find a man standing there, tall, thin, and bespectacled with closely shorn hair. He turned to look at her, observing her up and down in a cold, almost calculating way.

"Hinata," said her father simply, and again he seemed to be feeling something strongly that she could not define, "you will go with this man today. No branch guards will accompany you."

Hinata felt a thrill in her heart. It was happening - her father had found a situation for her. "And," she asked cautiously, "will I be coming back?"

Surprise flitted briefly over her father's features. He stared at her for a long time.

"Briefly," he said at last.

So she was going away. Perhaps to be married. She bowed in secret relief. Anything was better than a cursed seal. "Thank you, Father," she said quietly.

As she left, she saw her Father look at the photo of his late wife in his office. Then he looked away in something remarkably like shame.

She was silent as she followed the man out of the compound, and he seemed in no hurry to speak. He stared straight ahead of himself, leading her through the complex windings of the village, through crowds of people, and toward the main square, the village center. She trotted nervously behind him, trying to keep up.

"Where are we going?" she asked at last over the hubbub of chatter around them.

In answer, he made hand signs. He was a mute, she realized. She stared at him in confusion. "I don't speak sign language," she said.

At last, he turned around and pointed to a humble wooden wagon, pulled by bulls, set in the muddy center square.

Hinata paused in confusion. She was going to her new situation… in a wagon? Surely she wasn't going to be taken out of the village… was she? Nervousness transformed into fear. She wished, after all, that someone had told her what was going on.

* * *

Sakura was called downstairs by her parents one morning, her mother shouting her name from down in the kitchen. Sakura scampered down the stairs - and paused in surprise and caution.

A curvy, red-haired, smirking teenage girl, smug and confident, was standing there. She had a hand on her hip. She surveyed Sakura up and down with interest.

"What's going on?" Sakura asked, turning to her parents.

"You are going where she leads you for the day," said her mother firmly, tight lipped.

"But where -?"

"You will find out."

"And why -?"

"Sakura." Her mother's eyes had closed, in anger or in pain or both. "Just do it." The tone was quieter than Sakura was used to from her mother. Perhaps that was why she acquiesced, shying away from such an unfamiliar tone of defeat. Sakura's father put an arm around her mother's shoulders.

"Okay," Sakura said softly.

She followed the teenage girl out the door and through the roads and the morning bustle of crowds, across streets. They were heading, Sakura realized, toward the town center.

"Where are you taking me?" Sakura asked immediately, as soon as they were out of her parents' earshot.

"To be examined for suitability," said the girl, in a tone that said she knew something Sakura didn't and was rather enjoying it.

"Suitability -?" Sakura's eyes narrowed. "You mean for ninja training?"

"Bingo," said the girl. Perking up, Sakura walked faster. The girl gave an obnoxious, grating laugh. "Don't get so excited," she said. "We all weren't exactly paid to take you to a picnic."

Sakura faded a little in uncertainty, despite herself. "Why? What will happen?" The girl smirked, but said nothing.

Sakura saw a wooden wagon pulled by bulls standing in the muddy village square, and she swallowed nervously. What if she was found unsuitable, she wondered? What then?

* * *

Ino's mother entered her bedroom one afternoon. "Come with me," she said simply. "You're going with someone today."

"Who?" Ino asked curiously, but her mother said nothing and so Ino stood up and followed her out of the Yamanaka compound and into the flower shop. A solemn, stiff, dignified old man was standing there. He looked down his nose disapprovingly at her, and Ino's teeth gritted in instant dislike.

Ino's father was also there. "Ino," he said, "you are going with this man today."

"Is this my punishment?" Ino asked immediately, and she knew she'd gotten it right when suddenly the old man's eyes seemed almost pitying. She smirked at him. "What are you going to do, whip me?"

The man's lips thinned and his eyes sharpened again. "That attitude will not survive where you are going," he predicted.

"I'm shaking," said Ino sarcastically. The man smiled a humorless sort of smile that Ino could not read, and turned to Ino's father. They nodded to each other, and the older man passed by Ino and walked out the door.

"Come with me," he called back to her. Ino threw one last glance over her shoulder at her parents as she left with him. Ino's father was matter of fact, but she could have sworn later that for a moment her mother almost looked uncharacteristically sad.

A little nervous but determined not to show it, she asked the old man annoying, bratty questions all the way to the village square. He seemed increasingly irritated with her, but insisted on remaining stoical and saying nothing, which only inspired Ino toward greater heights of vindictive glee.

Then she saw what was in the village square, and she paused and frowned. A wagon led by two bulls was standing, waiting, in the mud. Like Hinata, she wondered, though with somewhat more calm, if they were leaving the village for the day.

Two other young girls about her age - one with pink hair, the other with blue black - were standing by the wagon, waiting, staring nervously around themselves.

* * *

The three girls paused by the wagon, staring cautiously across the distance at each other. None of them knew why the others were here. Hinata began to doubt her arranged marriage theory, but in that case knew of no other reason why she would be leaving the Hyuuga clan compound. Sakura wondered with more accuracy if these were her fellow students, and in that case why there weren't more of them. Ino pondered why these poor suckers were being punished along with her.

But for now they all gathered silently, nervous, around the wagon, giving each other curious sideways glances and fidgeting.

There was a sleepy looking man sitting holding the reins of the bulls, but he didn't seem to expect any more little girls. Their previous leaders had all mysteriously vanished. "Climb aboard and let's get to it," said the sleepy looking man in a slow drawl.

"Back there?" Ino asked, making a face, staring at the straw matting the back of the uncovered wagon. Hinata was relieved someone else had said it, because she'd privately been wondering the same thing.

"Back there," said the man, glaring for the first time.

"You're offending the civilian," Sakura muttered to the others.

"Wow, that's tragic," said Ino flatly, but Sakura had already climbed determinedly into the back of the wagon, ready to get on with this suitability test for ninja training and resolved to pass it. Not wanting to upset anyone and knowing it was either here or back to get a cursed seal, Hinata was the next to climb aboard bravely. Finally, Ino sighed, rolled her eyes, and followed them into the wagon.

Hinata tried to sit delicately and politely in the hay. Ino stared around herself in distaste. Sakura was by contrast almost too used to the muck, throwing herself down casually in the straw, boyishly, with her legs out and her knees open. It was not an open show of defiance - she just looked around with the firm, hard kind of casualness of someone who not grown up with the idea that she was in any way special. She had no natural femininity and virtually no higher class manners. If a fly had flown into her eye, she would barely have blinked.

There was a jerk, and the wagon began bucking and rocking unsteadily over the dirt road as the old man jiggled the reins and set off. The bulls pulled them slowly out of the village square and toward the forests beyond the village. The girls watched silently, somehow aware of the solemnity of the moment, as the village that was all they had never known fell behind them, passing villagers staring after them with curiosity and - with the adults - something sadder.

At last, Ino broke the silence.

"So." She smirked. "Why are you guys being punished?" She turned the others.

"Punished?" Sakura and Hinata echoed in surprise. "I thought I was going to an arranged marriage. Now I don't know where we're going," Hinata admitted. "But I'm not being punished. I don't think," she added nervously, wondering now if she was being punished for failing in her test to be clan heiress.

Ino stared at them in honest surprise. "Then… where on earth are we going?" she asked, bewildered.

"I got it from the girl who led me here," said Sakura intently. "She said we're being tested for ninja training suitability. The kind of ninja training that doesn't happen for girls at home."

"Is there such a thing?" Hinata wondered in surprise. "That would explain why we're all going back home after the day is done, but only for a short time. That's what my father said. We're being tested for ninja training suitability, and if we pass - I suppose we pack up to go live and train somewhere else."

"Oh! I've heard about this!" said Ino with interest. "Look, here's how my father once told me it works. The boys going through ninja training are under our leader Hokage-sama's control. He's a man, right? So he runs the men. But his former teammate, Elder Koharu-sama, is the highest ranked woman in the village. And she rules the girls.

"Hokage-sama made it really simple for the boys. I don't know much about it, but apparently they go to a public general ed Academy for ninja. They go to school every day, and go home every night. It's an all-boys Academy. Anyone is allowed inside. Hokage-sama is an idealist.

"But for the girls, Koharu-sama made it different. Either we are home-schooled by our clans, or she gains personal control over us. What I mean is this. On the grounds of Koharu-sama's estate, there is an all-girls ninja training boarding school. It's called Oinari Academy, after the Shinto goddess Oinari, the goddess of fertility, food, tea, sake, prosperity, weapons, and foxes, the seductive shapeshifters of ancient lore and also the symbol of Fire Country. The school is for the unwanted girls, the ones whose parents don't choose to train them at home. I heard there's a whole mini village surrounding the boarding school and everything, and all the teachers are female kunoichi, and all the students are girls going through ninja training.

"It's a specialized boarding school under Koharu-sama's personal command. She is the headmistress, and gets reports on everything we ever do while we're there. If we pass this suitability test today… we get to go there."

"That's why we all had different reasons for being here!" Sakura realized. "For example, my parents are first generation ninja and they wanted me to go through better training than they themselves could offer."

"I can no longer live in my clan compound, for clan political reasons," Hinata offered timidly.

"And my father thinks I need more supervision and need to learn more self control," Ino offered defiantly last. "So now it all makes sense. But… why only the three of us?"

"That's what I was wondering," Sakura said thoughtfully.

"Maybe we'll meet more girls once we get there," Hinata offered. "Or maybe the tests are only done in small groups."

"So you guys will be my classmates." Ino nodded. "I'd be cool with that. My name is Yamanaka Ino." She grinned. "I adore clothes, fashion, and shopping. I'm totally addicted to buying things and looking good."

Hinata smiled hesitantly. "My name is Hyuuga Hinata," she said, quickly warming to the idea of her new future. "I love baking, making jewelry, and flower pressing."

"And my name is Haruno Sakura," said Sakura, brightening, more cheerful and open and curious than before. "I love books and puzzles."

"Cool. Now, Sakura. You can't sit like that," Ino mandated.

"Sit like what?" Sakura asked, genuinely confused.

"Like this." Ino mimicked a gorilla slumping forward in the wagon.

"Hey!" said Sakura indignantly.

"Try like this," said Hinata, back straight and head up, curled up in a corner of the wagon. Curious, Sakura tried this.

"There," said Ino. "That's better."

"But you two look totally stiff and unnatural," Sakura pointed out in return. "Try relaxing a little." There was a particularly horrible jolt. "If this ride is any indication," she said dryly, "the boarding school isn't going to be quite as high class as your clan compounds."

Ino winced. "Point," she admitted, inwardly cursing her father. Hinata looked both thoughtful and worried. But they took Sakura's advice and tried to relax a little.

They had entered underneath the dappled shade of the deep green trees. They rocked in the wagon down treacherous rock-strewn dirt paths, on their winding way through the forests close to Konoha's vast wooden wall, toward their eventual, mysterious destination.

* * *

They stopped in front of a dark little clearing containing only a tilted wood shack. No other girls or wagons were present.

"Well that's not creepy at all," Ino muttered as they climbed out of the wagon.

"It's an abandoned spy outpost," Hinata observed, reserved.

Sakura had grown silent and tense in watchfulness.

The sleepy man had pulled the bulls to a halt and climbed out of the wagon himself. "Relax, I've been told to wait for you," he said, rolling his eyes when they looked worried. "Please, head on inside." He gestured lackadaisically to the waiting open door of the abandoned spy outpost. "She's waiting for you."

"Who?"

"The examiner," said the man enigmatically. "You're not allowed to know her name, in case she fails you."

The girls paused before the dark inside of the shack, huddling close together, staring into its contents to try to see what was ahead. They were all wondering with jumpy stomachs, in different ways, what would happen in there - and what would happen if they passed, and what would happen if they failed.

At last, they looked at each other, took deep breaths, and walked together into the shack. They felt glad, despite themselves, that there was somebody else beside them - that they didn't have to do this alone.

* * *

They entered the shack down a dark, urine scented hallway and emerged - into a well lit, clean room. It was covered in paper lanterns, and there was a rug on the floor. A lounge chair sat off to the side. A scowling old woman stood there, her bony, wrinkled hands folded and her eyes stern. She wore a long white smock.

"Step into the center of the room," she said simply.

They swallowed and stepped up. "Ma'am," Sakura was the one to ask, "what's going to happen to us?"

The old woman sighed. "I shall explain each part of the suitability test as I perform it. The first is much like a physical at the hospital. Obviously, we have to ascertain whether you are well enough to do the more physically intensive aspects of being a ninja."

"Do we have to be super muscular and fast?" Ino asked.

"No," said the woman flatly, and they relaxed. "Just healthy for your age group. If you already had all the physical skills necessary for being a ninja, there would be no need for training."

She asked them each a series of questions about their health history, which wasn't very long or complicated, scribbling down the answers on a clipboard. Then she checked blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate for each girl. She looked them over, walking around and around each of them, feeling their heads, necks, abdomens, hair, nails, and limbs, poking at them and turning them around this way and that. She took out a stethoscope and listened to their hearts and lungs. She set them on a scale and weighed them, and then had them each go into the dark hallway, crouch over a cup, and give a rather embarrassing urinary sample.

At last she said, "You will each sit down in the chair, one at a time, and I will draw blood from you for laboratory testing."

Sakura and Ino both got through this part of the testing fine, but when Hinata sat down in the seat, she was shaking and pale and she flinched away from the needle, whining. She looked away, eyes squeezed shut.

The old woman sighed. "If you can't even have blood drawn, that doesn't bode well for your future career as a ninja," she said flatly. Hinata felt deep shame as the woman drew the blood. She purposefully tried to hold herself very still.

Finally, they were all standing in front of her again. "Next, we check your chakra," said the old woman. "I trust you all have been taught how to discover and channel it?"

They nodded.

"Very well," said the old woman. "I will now test you for appropriate chakra usage."

Sakura raised her hand hesitantly. "Do we have to have… a lot of chakra?"

"Only enough size and control to perform a beginning technique," the old woman confirmed, and she looked amused when they all once more relaxed. "So this is how we test. Make a circle of chakra around yourself. It can be big or small. But it must be stable. If you cannot do this, you will not join Oinari Academy."

They each made their favorite hand seal - Hinata's was hare, Sakura's was bird, Ino's was tiger - and concentrated. Slowly, a sphere of blue chakra formed around each of them. "Excellent control in all three of you," the old woman noted, writing her notes down on the clipboard. "Enough chakra to pass, but not a significant amount. That's fine. So far you're all normal for girls of your age group - perhaps with unusually good chakra control."

"Ma'am, why is it only the three of us here today?" Ino asked curiously, emboldened to speak as they all let their hand signs go and the chakra faded out.

"I only give the test three at a time," said the old woman clinically, not looking up from her clipboard. "But there are other applicants being tested for suitability." She would say no more.

And then came the last part of the test - the part they weren't expecting.

"You will now be tested for sexual suitability," said the woman, watching them expressionlessly.

"... Sexual suitability?" Sakura was the one to ask.

The woman sighed and put her head in her hand. "Please tell me you know what sex is," she said, pained.

"Er… no?" said Ino, as if this should be obvious, when she looked to the other two girls and they also seemed mystified.

"Do you all have younger male brothers or cousins?"

They nodded slowly.

"So you know what a penis looks like?"

They nodded again, looking even more mystified.

"During sex, which only happens between adults, the man's penis is put in the woman's vagina. Like this." She made a helpful hand diagram. They all looked horrified. "He releases a seed inside her, and it grows into a baby inside the woman's abdomen. Then nine months later the baby comes out. This way." She made another helpful hand diagram toward her lower half.

Hinata suddenly looked like she was about to be ill - or faint. One or the other. Ino just looked grossed out. Sakura was staring with big eyes.

"Why would anyone do that willingly, you might ask?" the woman said matter of factly. "Because despite how it sounds, sex feels very, very good. Giving birth doesn't, but sex does. And when people become teenagers, they begin to want that feeling.

"So let's think about this logically. Most of the powerful people in the world are still men. What power do female ninja have that male ninja don't?"

"Sex," Ino breathed in realization.

"Correct. Sex and romantic love. A female ninja goes undercover, makes a powerful man fall in love with her, gets information from him, has sex with him, and then kills him while he's asleep. Sexual feelings and romantic love make men stupid. This is when we swoop in for the attack, for the good of our mission and our village."

"So why did we have all those other tests done?" Sakura demanded.

"Because female ninja go on fighting missions as well. Sometimes it's seduction missions, sometimes it's fighting missions. It all just depends.

"But we have to test if you're sexually normal, just in case."

"Ma'am… if we'd stayed with our clan compounds… we'd never have had to learn this information, would we?" Hinata asked softly, in pain. "My sister, the clan heiress - she will never have to learn this."

The woman paused. "... That is correct," she said at last softly, her eyes sympathetic. "Only Oinari girls learn this."

Ino suddenly turned around and swore, kicking the wall. "Damnit, Dad!"

Only Sakura looked accepting. If she had stayed where she was, she'd never have done anything important at all - sexual or non sexual. If that was what it took, she decided, that was what it took.

Still, she was more downcast than before.

"So." The woman walked toward them to begin the last battery of tests.

"NO!" Ino screeched. "I'm not doing anything like that!" Hinata began backing up in fear. Even Sakura looked tense - being tested for sexual capacity sounded terrifying.

"It is either this or you quit being a ninja altogether, and go back to your clan!" the old woman snapped.

Ino and Hinata paused.

"... Fine," Ino at last forced out, standing still and straight, proud.

Hinata paused, and then nodded shakily. "Okay," she whispered.

"Now. It's nothing bad. This doesn't have to define your life. Women do not become pregnant every time they have sex - other things have to happen first. Grown kunoichi still have boyfriends and husbands - and even more freedom to choose them than civilian women. It is best if your boyfriends and husbands are also ninja, or else they might not understand, but outside of missions it's perfectly okay to be in love, or be single, or whatever.

"And the test is not so bad either. Grown women go to the hospital for something called a gynecological exam. It's rather like a physical, except for female sex organs. This will be just like that.

"So. Here's how it works. Take off your clothes."

There was a pause. And then, deeply uncomfortable, they all began taking off their clothes.

"I have already felt your abdomen, so that's just fine. But I will need you to, one at a time, sit in the lounge chair with your legs open, and crouch your knees up by your chest."

They did so. Hinata whined nervously and the frowning, serious old woman had to hold her in place by the leg. Ino screeched and moved during the test and the woman slapped her on the stomach - she then became silent and tearful. Sakura shook the entire time, but tried desperately in fear to hold herself still.

But with all that, it didn't come to much. The woman inspected the outside of their vagina, then widened it - painfully, they cried out - with an instrument to check the inside of the vagina. She checked them all off as fine, and then they were allowed to get down and hurry back to their clothes.

"I don't know if I want to go to Oinari after all this," Ino was heard to mutter. Sakura was about to scold her, but the old woman beat her to the punch.

"Don't you understand? Your families have abandoned you to us. You'd better hope you get accepted into Oinari, or otherwise you'll go back to your clans - as permanent civilians."

Hinata looked down in quiet sorrow.

"Do you think we'll get in?" Sakura asked fearfully. All three looked up.

The woman sighed. "You've passed all the tests," she said. "As long as your blood and urine samples come back normal, you're in. To be honest? Some girls aren't even brave enough to make it through the door. We make it frightening on purpose. Other girls won't do the sexual tests. Still others aren't physically up to par, or refuse to take the blood test, or collapse during it.

"Out of the thirty or so applicants who will come to see me, only an average of six besides yourselves will make it through the front door and pass all the tests. You will go back to your families now, but only for a short wait period while everyone else is screened. Then you go to Oinari.

"You may leave." Unsympathetic to the end, she turned away.

* * *

The girls camped out in the forest clearing under the stars that night, the sleepy man and his bulls snoring away nearby. Hinata, Sakura, and Ino lay beside each other, staring up at the night sky, wide awake, their heads on their jackets.

"What do you guys think?" Hinata asked at last, lost.

"I think it's the best option we've got," said Sakura, sitting upright. "Even if it's scary. We'll get to be strong fighters and seduce powerful men and live at an all girls school named after a seductive fox goddess. I think it's cool."

Ino started to warm up to the idea. "Hey, that's true. Guys, if we do good enough at this school -" She sat upright brightly. "We could prove our families wrong about us! And each of us already has two friends, right?"

Hinata sat up too, and at last she smiled. "That's right," she said.

Then they started giggling and scaring each other with ghost stories, a warm feeling of camaraderie between them after the trial they'd been through together. For a while, they could pretend. They could pretend the tests hadn't been terrifying and horrifying. They could pretend they had any idea what was looming up before them.

They could pretend that all that mattered was cool fight moves and new friendships.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Hinata spent one more month with her family before being sent off to Oinari.

It didn't help that during this time, she couldn't look her father in the eye; knowing he was sending her out to join a school that taught its kunoichi how to have sex for the good of the mission severed her last link to the image of her father as a perfect protector. She knew he was doing it so that she wasn't branded with a cursed seal. But she also knew that he could have found other ways around the Caged Bird seal; they would just have involved Hinata becoming a civilian, something her father apparently refused to accept.

For all these reasons, Hinata could barely look at her father, and he seemed no more eager to look at her. Hinata's suspicion of his apparent shame was solidified. She felt cold, silent anger towards him, an unfamiliar feeling that she did not like.

Hanabi asked her constant, curious questions about where she was going and what life would be like in Oinari. "It is a boarding school for kunoichi girls on Koharu-sama's grounds," said Hinata, "with a little village around it."

Hanabi pouted. "I wish I could go."

Hinata paused, and smiled sadly. In a strange way, she was glad it was her that was going, and not her sister. She felt she was protecting her sister against some great injustice.

Neji made sure to reaffirm to Hinata his inner knowledge. "This will not change anything," he said formally. "You are doomed to always be weak, Hinata-sama."

Hinata looked down until he'd walked away. Neji had temporarily been nicer to her while it seemed she might be a branch family member. Now that she wasn't, he'd gone back to his original state.

One up side was that the clan elders were no longer interested in her anymore. Their ploy to make her a branch member spoiled, her presence soon to be gone, and her title as clan heiress revoked, when she passed by them it was like she didn't even exist. This was a relief, though it did become a bit depressing after a while.

Hinata woke up on the morning of her leaving to find scrolls lying by her bedside. She opened them up curiously, and her eyes widened. These were official Hyuuga main family ninja ability scrolls, going up to very high levels of skill. Her father must have placed them here while she was asleep.

She knelt and tucked them safely in her suitcase. She decided not to mention them, just in case he wasn't supposed to have given them to her.

Then she tucked away her other treasures. Some scant clothes and toiletries, but more importantly a series of bracelets she'd made with her sister, a framed photograph of her mother, a book full of flower pressings each one penned with a certain date and what had happened on the day of picking, and a book of her favorite baking recipes.

She checked her room once more to make sure she'd left nothing behind, then hefted up her suitcase and carried it out to the front entryway of the clan compound. The mute was standing there; silently, he took her pack, and she smiled at him with the kind of gratefulness that sprang from the pain of fear.

She looked around one more time at her childhood home. She'd already made her goodbyes to Hanabi the night before. She saw her father for a ghost of a second at his office window; then he shuttered the window closed and he was gone.

She turned back around, and nodded. "Lead me to Koharu-sama's estate," she said to the mute, in what she attempted to be a brave tone of voice and not a terrified one.

* * *

Sakura sat down seriously with her parents and told them what the training would consist of. Her father became very quiet and tears came to her mother's eyes.

"Don't be upset," she told them firmly, trying to keep up a brave face. "This is best. I'll learn to be really amazing and powerful this way. I wanted to thank you, for getting me out of here."

Her parents each placed a hand over one of hers.

Sakura felt for the rest of that month a kind of preemptive homesickness. She'd always complained inwardly about her home, but now that she knew she was leaving for several years she was struck with a sudden sorrow. She wouldn't be the same person when she came back, she knew, and her home wouldn't be the same either.

I have to do this, she told herself firmly. It's the only way I'll become a strong kunoichi.

She messily stuffed a lot of tomboyish clothes in her suitcase. (Her mother scolded her and refolded everything later, much to Sakura's irritation, though both of their anger was muffled somewhat by the sobering fact that Sakura was leaving.) She also took a flamed cloak she'd bought years ago, which had "FIGHTING SPIRIT" on the back in big bold letters, to remind her of her own determination. And she took a single framed photograph of herself with her parents. The rest of the space in her backpack was relegated for her favorite books.

"Picking a favorite book is like picking a favorite child!" she was heard to wail, sitting in front of her bookcase and trying to choose which ones to bring with her.

She wondered if she would have time for puzzles at Oinari Academy. In the end, she decided they must have free time at some point, so she stuffed a lot of unfinished crossword and sudoku puzzles into her suitcase as well.

On the morning of, Sakura walked calmly down into the kitchen with her suitcase, to find the redheaded teenage girl standing there.

"You ready to go, squirt?" she asked.

Sakura glared at the nickname, but said, "Yes," with as much determination as she could muster. Then she turned to her parents. They both moved forward and gave her very tight, long hugs. She felt tears sting her eyes at their familiar scent, but told herself she couldn't cry on her first day as a real kunoichi.

"I'll miss you guys," she whispered, and they teared up a little bit too. "I promise I'll come back really strong."

"... Just do your best," her mother managed, before looking away, emotional. Sakura's father put a hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it off. They'd been getting along even worse than usual lately, and Sakura suspected it was because of her.

"Goodbye," she said, and left out the door with the redheaded teenage girl. A group of her old friends and bullies were standing out on the street playing ball; they stared at her when she passed.

"How much of a ninja am I now?" she asked childishly, and stuck out her tongue at them before flouncing off, determined to hold up her own suitcase in her tiny hands.

The redheaded girl hurried to walk beside her. "... Bullies?" she asked, and Sakura nodded, looking straight ahead, determination filling her. The girl smiled. "Good for you," she said. "I think I'm starting to like you, squirt.

"Next stop: Koharu-sama's estate."

* * *

Ino exhibited extraordinary anger toward her father over the month leading up to Oinari.

Everything she said to him carried the bite of bitterness. In her mind, sending her off to become a low class prostitute kunoichi ranged out of a child's punishment and into needless cruelty.

"You're dismissing me because you don't want to deal with me!" she accused him once. "Because you're tired of me and you wish I was a boy!"

Her father just looked at her with that infuriating even temperedness he always exhibited. He didn't say anything to inflame her further, but he didn't deny anything she'd said either.

She was angry even with her mother. "Can't you stop this?" she asked her mother desperately once. "You won't even speak up in my defense!" Her mother simply looked away, as silent and reserved as always.

Other wives and other children were always teasing Ino about being shipped off to Oinari. They made snide comments in the compound halls, and though Ino always had a biting retort waiting on the tip of her tongue, what infuriated her was that she couldn't really hit back. It was true - she was being shipped off to Oinari.

Ino's previous self confidence in her own privilege had been broken in two ways - first, by having her genitals forcibly inspected for "suitability" by a strange ninja medic woman, and now by realizing there was nothing she could do about leaving to be what was in her mind a "lower class kunoichi," no one who would stand up for her.

Determined to burn all bridges, Ino packed on her own without telling anyone else about it. She stole Yamanaka clan ninja ability scrolls from her father's office the night before packing, and then stuffed them underneath all the piles of pretty, fashionable clothes, scented stuff, and dustables she could fit into her suitcase.

The next morning, early that day, she was standing with her suitcase waiting outside the Yamanaka clan compound when the dignified older man walked up. He paused, his eyebrows raising in surprise, and then said, "Are you ready? Don't you want to say goodbye to anyone?"

"I already have," Ino lied easily, and walked off with him toward Koharu-sama's estate with her suitcase full of beautiful clothes and stolen scrolls in tow. Let them wake up today. Let them find her and the scrolls gone.

She refused to say goodbye, and she never looked back.

* * *

Koharu-sama's estate was vast and beautiful, obviously well kept up by professional gardeners, a sign of the wealthiest, oldest, and most powerful kunoichi in the village.

They were led past a wall and a gate, through endless greenery, past Koharu-sama's grand gold-gilded and arch-roofed main home compound, and into the gardens beyond. They went underneath a spray of wisteria trees, down a small hill lined with round bushes, over a traditional little bridge arching over a calm creek, and down a stone pathway with steps leading up to a vast wood multi story compound. It was humble, but larger than Koharu-sama's home and somehow no less grand despite its humility.

Instead of going into the compound, as they'd expected, they were first led around the roofed wrap-around porch to the back, and they looked down a hill and out over a small traditional village. "Wow…" more than one girl whispered, her eyes widening as she stood there with her pack of goods.

An intertwining of smooth paved roads lay below them, reamed with paper lanterns for the evening. Lining the roads were a series of nicely built two-story traditional wood buildings with rice paper screens. It really was its own little village - they could see the civilians who ran the place bustling about the roads even now.

They walked back around the porch, and entered Oinari itself. "Welcome to Oinari Academy" said a white cloth sign hanging in the front entrance. They turned left, and walked down a rice paper screened hallway - passing by traditional kneeling empty classrooms with tatami mats and little individual desks, by paper lanterns hanging unlit in ceiling corners, by vast sparring and training matted rooms - and up a discreet flight of side stairs at the end of the hallway. They had to climb up in quite peculiar fashion, and then went down another hallway and through a door to their left.

They walked in… to find these were the dormitories. A series of bunk beds lined the long high-ceilinged room, four bunks in all, with a little side bunk attached to a desk below it sitting in a corner for the ninth girl. The rest of the beds all had desks set against the wall nearest their heads, and each bed had a bedside table with a set of drawers beside it (one on each side of the bunk). Little sets of stairs all led up to the higher bunks.

Their guards left, and they were alone with the other girls, feeling shy and uncertain. At last, each walked forward, and went to claim a bed as their own. Hinata took a top bunk and Sakura took the bunk below hers; they were on the right side of the room, closest to the right wall and the desk bed.

Ino, Sakura, and Hinata immediately brightened and hurried over to each other, greeting one another, feeling relieved that they were rooming with each other and already knew at least two other people. Then there was a slam. They looked around, and Ino screamed in outrage.

She'd immediately taken the desk bed in the corner, sitting there quite sullenly and morosely until she'd brightened and stood up upon Hinata and Sakura entering the dormitory. She'd abandoned her things at her desk - and now a girl with short, asymmetrical purple hair had just swept all her things with a slam onto the floor and taken the desk for herself.

Ino immediately stormed up and pushed the girl to the floor. Then she kicked her in the face. The girl screamed out in pain. "You take my bed?! You take my fucking bed?!" Ino screeched.

Ino was a little touchy in her new place, and not in the mood to take any shit.

Suddenly, the door at the other end of the long room was open and a woman was behind Ino, holding her back. The girls gasped. The woman had a long trench coat bulging with weapons and explosives, leg armor that made her shinobi sandals look like combat boots, a short skirt, lots of fishnet armor, a face beautifully made with makeup that was now twisted in a cruel smirk, and long purple hair tied up behind her head in a hairclip.

"I appreciate the vicious enthusiasm," she told Ino, "but keep your violence inside the sparring mats and the classroom." She stepped back, as Ino looked around at her in surprise and relaxed.

The girl with the short purple hair immediately stood up. "She hit me!" she said indignantly, pointing at Ino.

"Yeah, well, this is a violent ninja school and you shoved her shit onto the floor," said the woman casually. "Go cry me a river as you grab your crap and take another bed. She called dibs first."

The girl's eyes narrowed. "Who are you, anyway?" she asked suspiciously.

The woman leaned over and smirked with sickly twisted sweetness into the girl's face. The girl swallowed nervously as the air became heavy with killing intent. "My name is Mitarashi Anko, and for the next several years, I'm your ninja arts teacher and dormitory RA," she said in a low, sweet voice. "And I'm telling you to go take another bed. Clear?" She beamed, her eyes cold and merciless.

Reluctantly, scowling, the purple haired girl grabbed her stuff, glared once at a calm and unfazed Ino, and then stormed off to go take another bed. "Hey, you can bunk with me -" a girl with frizzy pigtails and a friendly freckled face began, but the purple haired girl stomped past her and walked up to a girl with an afro decorated with a shuriken marking.

"Move!" the purple haired girl barked.

Anko watched curiously, not interfering. Apparently, if it didn't get violent, it was none of her business. At last, the shuriken afro girl, looking trapped, grabbed her things and scampered off to go bunk with the pigtailed girl, who looked surprised and skeptical. Two twins, each with a pixie cut of dark hair and narrow dark eyes, stood next to each other nervously where they'd bunked together. The purple haired girl was now bunking with a girl with a headful of messy, spiky ginger hair who was scowling viciously. Sakura and Hinata had bunked together, and Ino had the desk bed next to them.

"Great! Now. Names," said Anko-sensei cheerfully, clapping her hands together. "Let's go around the room."

Sakura, Hinata, and Ino introduced themselves first, and then came the others. Everyone seemed fine with admitting who they were except for the spiky ginger haired girl and the asymmetrical purple haired girl, who both looked annoyed and extremely reluctant. Spiky haired girl was Fuki, purple haired girl was Ami. Shy afro girl was Kasumi. Friendly, sensible frizzy pigtailed girl was Senzu. The nervous twins, who no one could tell apart at first, were Senna and Fumiko.

"Alright," said Anko-sensei. "I'll give you a few minutes to settle down, get to know each other, and put your things away. Then we have a meeting scheduled with Koharu-sama, your headmistress." She left, going into her side bedroom and shutting the door.

"Now look," said Ami bossily to everyone, "I'm the leader here. Got it?"

"No, I don't got it," said Ino immediately, and Ami turned to glare at her. "What?" said Ino defiantly. "Nobody's the boss of me."

"I'm with Ino," Sakura admitted. "She won't tell me what to do unless she feels I'm in danger. And I hate people who tell me what to do."

"I'm with Ino as well," said Hinata, feeling admittedly braver with others behind her, but also already forming a distinct distaste for Ami.

"Well, I have Fuki and Kasumi behind me," said Ami snobbishly. "Right?" She turned to glare at the two girls, who must have taken the suitability test with her. "Neither of them would be here if it weren't for me."

"I guess," Fuki sighed, attitudinal till the end. She seemed like the kind of person who would automatically side with the angriest person in the room.

Ami turned to glare at a reluctant Kasumi until she squeaked, "... Yes, right," scowling all the while and staring at the floor. She didn't seem to know how to stand up for herself - a problem for a ninja.

"What, so we're separating into factions?" said Senzu skeptically. "Fine, then I'm going with the group of girls who didn't introduce themselves by shoving somebody's shit onto the floor." She nodded to Hinata, Sakura, and Ino, who beamed at her.

The twins looked at each other, swallowed, and nodded. "We're with them too!" they squeaked as one. They seemed honestly a little afraid of Ami and Fuki, which could have been part of the reason why they made the decision that they did.

Ami glared around herself, narrow-eyed, clearing coming to a few realizations. Her ploy for power wasn't working at all the way she had planned. First, she was outnumbered. Second, her allies were reluctant to be behind her. Third, she'd just alienated everybody else in the room.

She scowled and crossed her arms, looking away, perhaps more self conscious and uncertain of herself than she wanted to admit. "Whatever," she muttered.

The room became quiet for a while. They pulled their things out of their suitcases and arranged them on desks, on bedside tables, in drawers, blankets going on beds. Their beds and desks started each becoming their own.

Then the girls separated into two groups, chattering. Senzu (the pigtailed girl) immediately became extremely talkative and chipper, putting everyone at their ease, until even Senna and Fumiko (the twins) had lightened up and were smiling more easily. Hinata was beginning to have hope tentatively that this wouldn't be completely horrible. Sakura was happy just to be talking to a fellow ninja-to-be in a friendly way. Ino put some of her anger for the situation behind her, smirking and talking casually.

"Girls." They all looked around in surprise. Anko-sensei was standing there seriously. "It's time for your meeting with Koharu-sama. Don't worry," she said in amusement at their expressions, "it's totally standard."

But even as they relaxed, there was something sharp and interested about her eyes. She watched them - and perhaps hadn't stopped watching them since they'd entered the grounds.

What she'd observed about them, though, only Anko herself knew.

* * *

She showed them the ins and outs of Oinari as they walked back through the building.

"In your dormitory, that's my room." She opened it up to reveal a dark-painted place with lots of bright pop-up art graphic posters, twisted metal ornaments, and cinder-block shelves, with a mini kitchen that had been transformed into a place for tea ceremony and flower arrangements. Kunai, shuriken, and swords hung on walls throughout the space. The bed was a pallet, simple and humble. "Then the other door is the bathroom where the toilets, sinks, and showers are." She opened up the other door to reveal a long, well-lit bathroom, with the toilets on one side and the curtained showers on the other.

"Now, follow me."

They followed her out of their dormitory. "Along here is where the older classes live. Don't invade unless you have a deathwish." They padded along the other closed dormitory doors with morbid curiosity, and climbed in that peculiar way back down the stairs.

Down the hall they passed by the training rooms and classrooms again. "All training and learning takes place along here," said Anko. She walked them out to the entrance with the white cloth sign. "Behind that sign are the public bathrooms for during the school day." She pointed. Then she took them down the other, unexplored hallway to their right.

They passed by a series of dining halls. Each hall was covered in matting, with cushions sat in front of tiny individual eating tables in a wide square formation around the hall. "Each class has its own eating hall, and its own live-in cook. This is yours, and that's where the cook lives." She pointed to a door at the other end of the dining hall. "Now, this way."

They got to the end of the hall, and climbed up another peculiar, steep set of discreet stairs. "Up here," said Anko-sensei, "is Koharu-sama's office. When she's at Oinari at all, this is where she stays." Anko turned around to them and they paused on the stairs. "Never visit you unless you have an explicit reason to. Do I make myself clear?"

They nodded slowly, intimidated.

She took them up the stairs to the very top. There was burnished, polished wood door there, with a black painted carving on it in the image of the ancient Shinto goddess Oinari. Anko knocked. "Enter," came a very old, very dignified female voice.

They walked in to find Koharu-sama at a desk. Her silver hair was pinned tightly behind her head by what looked at first to be a beautiful head dress - until you looked closer and discovered it was made of deadly senbon needles. Her fashion was reserved but on point, her makeup was picture perfect, her every move graceful and steady, her posture ramrod straight, each movement near silent. The lines in her face were strict creases - not frown lines or smile lines, but rather the lines of a stern woman who hardly ever showed any emotion at all.

It was easy to realize, when looking at Koharu-sama, that you were standing in the presence of quietly intimidating shinobi greatness. The girls stood in one long line, shy, reluctant, fidgeting, reserved.

Anko stepped forward. "Koharu-sama, these are -"

"I know who they are, Anko," said Koharu, casually and coldly, still staring at the line of new girls in a calculating way.

"Of course." Anko nodded her head in a half-bow deferentially and stepped backward, hands behind her back, her obedience completely different from her aura of before.

"Hmm," said Koharu at last. "Well, they're not much to work with, but it will have to do." Some girls slumped, others looked angry.

Koharu smiled humorlessly.

"You all must learn how to hide your emotions better," she said bluntly, "and not take comments so personally. Oh yes, it's true, you're not much to work with.

"But by the end of your time at Oinari, I can promise you: you will be an obedient, steady, strategical shinobi, a beautiful and feminine seductress when necessary, and a merciless and powerful killer when necessary. Everything else is just a side effect of that end goal.

"I always like to remind new girls of that, at the very beginning. I also like it when we can look each other in the eye."

She stared at them for a long moment.

"You may leave," she said at last dismissively, turning back to the paperwork at her desk. The girls filed out silently behind Anko.

"Is she always like that?" Ino asked at the bottom of the staircase.

Anko smirked as they walked back up to their dormitory. "You mean, a cold-hearted bitch? Yeah, pretty much. But so am I. It's why we're still alive, and other women aren't."

She smirked and turned to them back inside their dormitory.

"Sleep well," she said with eerie glee. "Tomorrow I start making you spill some of that lovely blood I like so much. Sweet dreams ~!"

She gave a girlish little wave and scampered off to her bedroom, leaving nine very bewildered, tired, exasperated, skeptical, nervous, and uncertain future kunoichi behind her. Safe to say, nobody got very much sleep that first night.

Not all of it was nervousness. It was also strange, being in alien beds for the first time.

For all that, however, during their first few days after that first breakfast in the dining hall? They started out as servants, cleaning the entire length of the school for all the older girls. This was when they really formed a hatred for the older girls and a longing to be one, along with a loathing for the harshness of Anko-sensei and Koharu-sama, and a desperate sickness for home.

It was also when their training first began.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

The nine girls of the new class cleaned the entire school, top to bottom. They scrubbed the floors and the staircases, dusted and polished, cleaned toilets, and even did the older girls' laundry for them and helped the cooks clean up the kitchens after meals.

Koharu-sama would often come for surprise inspections to see how they were getting along, and could prove very fierce if they were not up to par. "Look at this spotted floor!" she shouted fiercely, pointing at where she was standing. "If you slack off in other areas of your life, how do you hope to be a good ninja?!"

When the girls looked rebellious, she continued.

"Oh, you think you're so high and mighty! You think you know more about being a ninja than me?! You think you know the great secret to success and I don't?! Eh?!"

The girls at last looked down, drooping.

Convinced of their looming failure as ninja, they nonetheless learned to work much harder and not slack off, fearful of Koharu-sama's surprise inspections. They got down and dirty cleaning even the most disgusting parts of Oinari, and Anko-sensei would often walk over to hours of hard work, look at a single spot, and say flatly, "Clean again."

Some of the girls would yell; others would start crying. Anko would wait calmly for the emotion to burn itself out, then say, "It just gets harder from here," and walk away. She never defended them from Koharu-sama's fearsome tirades, standing off to the side and letting them learn the hard way.

The older girls didn't help either. They would laugh and sneer, purposefully tracking in mud and making more for the new girls to clean. Or they would look over their laundry and tell the new girls snidely if it was not up to snuff. One older girl actually walked into the first class dining hall during breakfast one day, holding a plate with a single spot.

"Do you have any idea how disgusting this is?!" she snapped.

It didn't help that the girls were homesick, all of essentially equal intensity. For example, Sakura had expected to be homesick, but Hinata and Ino, so angry with their fathers, had not expected to feel much pain at their loss. Yet they did feel that pain - keenly. Slowly, it came upon them that they would not see the only home they had ever known for several years, and they were intimately aware of this grief.

Each stressor piled on top of another toward an eventual implosion. Between Koharu-sama telling them they would not be good ninja, Anko-sensei continually correcting their work and never showing sympathy, the older girls being cruel to them, the general implication that if they did not work impossibly hard they were not up to snuff, the unfamiliar disgust and monotonous drudgery of what they had to do, and their budding homesickness, each girl had her breakdown at some point or another.

Ino's was first. She broke down one day during toilet cleaning, screaming and throwing things, sitting down and refusing to work any further. The other girls all shied away fearfully, but Anko stood calmly, waiting for Ino to burn out into exhaustion. "Fine then," said Anko at last. "Go and pack your things. Go back and tell your father you have failed at being a ninja. You didn't even make it to your first day of training."

Ino looked up, eyes wide, and sat there for a long minute.

Anko got very close and growled into her face, "No? Not an option for you? Then start working and stop bitching." She stood and walked away, leaving Ami looking smug and self satisfied behind her.

Ino sat there for a while, tearful but mostly because of anger. Finally, she sat up and said distantly, defeated, "You guys go ahead. I'll finish this up." And she returned to scrubbing the toilets again.

Ino's fire eventually returned to her over the following days, but it came in a hard, determined shell. She became fanatical and even bossy in making sure everything was up to snuff and passed inspection. She had, without knowing it, formed the proper ninja attitude in a relatively safe space, letting go of most of her former spoiled pretenses.

Sakura started crying a lot. She tried not to let it interfere with her duties, but Anko would stand over her and say, aghast, "Tears and snot are dripping all over the floor! What is wrong with you?"

At last, losing her temper, Sakura stood and glared tearfully. "This is too damn hard!" she shouted. "How does this apply to being a ninja?!"

"I thought you were supposed to be intelligent, Sakura. Is it really that hard to suss out?" said Anko sarcastically. Sakura paused, glaring, her eyes narrowing. "But you, too, are welcome to leave Oinari if you would like," Anko added maliciously, and walked away. "Break if you want, but don't expect to be welcomed back in here."

The taunt was called back over Anko's shoulder, casual, but it struck Sakura to the core. She'd forgotten, for a moment, her goals. Was this really "too hard?" Would she let it stop her? Hell no!

Furiously, she knelt down and returned to scrubbing the floor with fiery intensity, her tears gone. She became a silent but intense and unabating worker.

Hinata's breakdown was last, partly because it happened slowly over a long period of time. She became increasingly depressed, melancholic, listless, lethargic, putting too little into everything she ever did. Secretly, she became engrossed by the thought that she was such a pathetic Hyuuga she wouldn't even make it to day one of ninja training at Oinari.

This just made her fall further into her pit of despair.

Anko knelt down beside her one day as she was slowly, half-heartedly washing the staircase, her gaze empty and listless. "Hinata," she said, "I think you need to stop thinking so much about how good or bad a ninja you are."

Hinata looked up in surprise.

"The people who thrive under pressure do not think that they are good ninja," Anko advised. "They simply don't think about how good or bad they are, only striving to do their best in each individual moment."

Anko stood, leaving a surprised and thoughtful Hinata behind her.

"Think about it," said Anko, and she walked away. It was probably the kindest thing she said to any of her students in those first weeks, and even that wouldn't exactly qualify her for a peace award. But Hinata had needed treatment a little more delicate, and this advice struck her to her core.

She thought about Neji and Hanabi. Maybe it wasn't that they were great and she was terrible, she realized. Maybe she'd had it wrong all along. Perhaps it was simply that they did as much as they could in each pressured moment, while she was constantly distracted by the fear that she was doing everything wrong.

Hinata became a steady, even worker, simply doing as much as she could in each moment.

All nine of the girls, however, went through their crises in some form or another. Ami's and Fuki's were angrier, Kasumi's and the twins' more teary, and Senzu's so nearly invisible that no one was sure what it was. Senzu, cheerful to the end, told no one, but was perhaps because of it the most unstable of all.

They were each engrossed in their own problems for a while, but slowly they came out of their funk and looked up and around themselves at their reality, at what they had painfully realized was their new home. They looked at older, more powerful students and even ninja.

And they realized with new fire that they wanted to be like them. They didn't want to be the ones scrubbing the floor anymore - they wanted to give the orders instead.

* * *

The girls all trudged slowly out after breakfast to cleaning day one morning, yet another day on the job, but Anko paused before them, obviously trying very hard to repress her excitement.

"... Koharu-sama has passed you!" she shouted at last in glee. "You're starting ninja training!"

The girls paused, eyes widening - and then they began cheering. They had made it to day one.

They got their ninja equipment and knelt in their new classroom before Anko, fidgeting in growing excitement. Group one, Sakura, Ino, and Hinata's group, chatted amongst themselves, while Ami's group sat with silent, grim determination on their other side.

"Your ninja training will be divided into three sections, each comprising two years," said Anko. "In the first two years, you learn mostly on a classroom and theoretical level. In the second two years, you begin using your skills in practical application in safe environments. Final two years, all bets are off - I'm talking faux missions."

The girls brightened in excitement. Ami smirked over at the other group, as if silently telling them she would be better than them. Sakura, Hinata, and Ino's group scowled and glared back.

"Now, as for what you will actually learn during ninja training, it will be divided into four parts," said Anko. "You will learn seduction skills, physical ninja skills, and academic ninja skills. But then you will also be required to train in personal skills, usually from the clan scrolls you have brought with you. Here at Oinari, we believe in developing personal skills early and alongside your other skills. They are just as important.

"If you have no clan skills, come see me after I've finished going over the syllabus and basic lessons structure.

"Next class, we start with a lesson on kunoichi outfits and sensibility."

Sakura walked up to Anko after class, frowning, alongside Senzu.

"Alright," Anko sighed. "I knew it would be you two, and based on my information I have a pretty clear idea of what I want you to do. Senzu, you do best in tests of physical speed and strength - for you, I would recommend trying to master some style of taijutsu.

"But Sakura, you're quite different. Your physical skills and raw power are poor, but your intelligence and chakra control skills are off the charts. For you I would recommend genjutsu - illusions. Genjutsu creates a sensory mirage in the victim using the cerebral nervous system, and in its higher forms can even inflict direct damage to that nervous system.

"There is a village library full of ninja scrolls down the hill. For your personal ability scrolls, I'd recommend going there."

Sakura and Senzu walked up to their group, only to find Ami's group also lying in wait for them. "Aww," said Ami in a baby's voice, "don't have any clan skills? Too bad, guess you'll never become a worthwhile ninja."

"Oh? And what can you do?" Ino snapped.

Ami smirked. "I can shapeshift, taking on not only visual appearance but physical abilities. Fuki has powers of physical electrocution upon contact," the spiky haired girl scowled at them, "and Kasumi's family are weapons specialists," the shy, scowling afro girl glared.

"Yeah? Well Senna and Fumiko are Siamese twins, and can combine their strength into one. Hinata has a taijutsu style and doujutsu eyes, and I have the power of mind and body control," Ino snapped. "So we're plenty strong, and we outnumber you. Besides, Senzu and Sakura are both going to grow great powers. Aren't you?" she added aggressively at them.

"Yes!" said Sakura in surprise. Then, firmer, "Yes, of course I will. Anko-sensei told me I have genjutsu prowess." She smirked. "And I heard that's very rare. Senzu, meanwhile, is super strong and fast. So she's studying taijutsu."

Senzu smiled, relieved at being defended.

"Women with the kind of taijutsu prowess that Senzu has are also very rare - the kind involving brute strength," said Hinata. Everyone stared at her. "I am a Hyuuga," she said simply, with authority. "I know these things. And I think Senzu is very intelligent as well, making her even deadlier."

"Yeah, well you're not a very good Hyuuga, are you?" Ami muttered. "You are here." Hinata became timid again.

"Uh, pot, kettle, black?" Ino pointed out. "Come on, girls. Let's go. We have to get Sakura and Senzu's scrolls." And the first group parted ways with the scowling second.

As they were walking down the hill, they all brightened. "I can't believe I'm getting my own scrolls!" said Senzu in excitement, skipping backwards down the hill.

Fumiko smiled. "Senna's excited to see the village, she's just too nervous to say anything," she said in fond amusement. Senna smiled shyly, eager, from beside her. Senna, they had learned, had a speech impediment that kept her from talking. Fumiko, the calmer twin, translated for her.

"I'd like to see it too," said Hinata in interest.

Sakura smiled determinedly. Ino nudged her. "You're getting your own scrolls too," she said smirking, and Sakura lifted her head and walked a little prouder.

They entered the village, called out by passing villagers hailing and welcoming "the new girls." They smiled and waved and shouted greetings back, quickly finding the library. It was the largest building in the village.

They entered, and found the different ninja skills sections were marked by signs. Senzu went to taijutsu to choose a specific style focusing on brute strength, while Sakura, ever the scholar, methodically went through each scroll in the genjutsu section.

She frowned seriously, taking out all the useful scrolls she possibly could find.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

"Alright," said Anko in class the next day, "now, kunoichi outfits have to bridge the gap between fashionable and sensible. That is the most important thing to remember."

The girls all stood before her.

"Our lesson today will focus on kunoichi attire. There are plenty of ninja attire stores down in the Oinari village, and it's best if you start dressing like a kunoichi from the earliest age. So before we get started with training, you should know the ins and outs of your outfit. Most training kunoichi have many different outfits, before settling as actual ninja on one lasting ninja outfit for each rank or period of their life.

"First, the practical. Whether you wear pants and a shirt, or a kunoichi dress, you should always wear fishnet armor underneath the outfit. I even wear arm and leg guards. Second, any clothing you do purchase must be shinobi-fit, easy to move around in. Third, makeup should be waterproof, and no hanging jewelry or perfume should be allowed. Fourth, all underwear must be sports attire.

"This is just common sense.

"You must wear holsters or another place to carry scrolls and weapons, another basic fact. Your hair should be either short or tied up behind your head - otherwise, it could be grabbed by branches or the enemy.

"A common myth is that ninja clothes have to be dark. They do not. We will teach you methods of concealment, no matter what kinds of clothes you wear.

"This brings me to the other element: fashion.

"The colors to your outfit, and your makeup, must suit your complexion type. Your outfit shape must complement your body type. Your hair must suit your face shape. These are all things we will teach you in the seduction part of our training.

"But just remember: just because you have to be sensible, doesn't mean you can't look good. In fact, it is a kunoichi's express job to look good, and seductive. You must be beautiful murderers."

* * *

They spent the morning on kunoichi outfits, and then the afternoon on a recital: they all filed into the big front entrance hall and watched the older girls show off their skills, the older girls combatting one another on the entrance hall floor.

The new students knelt in rows on the wood floor, seiza style, their knees hurting - but they forgot all this when the older girls began, watching in awe.

Two girls would go at each other at a time. They used and integrated a flawless combination of so many different skills: weapons and equipment, taijutsu, Academy level ninjutsu, even traps and genjutsu illusions. They were fast, hard, strong, muscular, intelligent, and powerful.

More than that, they looked good doing it. Each dressed and made themselves up flawlessly. And they carried a deadly kind of seriousness in a fight.

After the recital was over, and the students were filing off of the floor, a few older girls in a group snickered at the new girls as they passed. "Maybe one day, if you work hard, you'll be half as good as us," one of the girls sneered.

Ino got indignant. "Of course we'll be as good as you!" she shouted. Sakura scowled and glared, while Hinata reverted momentarily back to her older timid self.

The older girls just shouted and shrieked with laughter. "Not with that attitude, you won't," said one of them cattily, and the older girls sashayed away.

The new girls glared after them in frustration. "Why are they always so mean to us?"

"What they mean is this," said Anko, reserved. "You don't stand up to them in the correct way. Outside the battlefield, matured ninja respond to each other in a very certain way. You have the correct work mentality and ethic, but now you have to learn the correct off-work mentality.

"Don't shout and get angry and show emotion. Be reserved, give sharp, pointed barbs, be intelligent and witty. Stand up for yourself, and do it in that way. That is how you gain respect among other ninja. Not by shouting and running around with unnecessary movements and emotions."

So over the following days, each of the new girls tried to tailor their actions toward the other girls based on this advice. Over time, Ino came to be the queen of smirks and sharp, sarcastic barbs, in addition to being hard and bossy during ninja training. She stopped yelling and started sniping back. Sakura became the queen of severe, frigid, devastatingly accurate observations - letting her anger out in safe ways - in addition to being fiery and silently determined during ninja training.

It was hardest for Hinata, learning to stop being so shy and stand up for herself. Finally, she managed to craft the persona of the "mask." She showed no emotion, no vulnerability, and made calm, even comments to show that - infuriatingly - nothing ever got to her. She became serene and uncaring, even smiling wryly at times in the face of an older girl's fury. This in addition to her calm, steady, determined hard work at ninja training.

All three of them had let go of many illusions of self-entitlement or the easiness of life. And they had bought proper beginning kunoichi gear in the village together, shedding their old civilian clothes and shopping for new functional ones - not very fashionable yet.

To some extent, this growth applied to all nine of the new girls. That was how they started out their true ninja training - as girls changed into beginning kunoichi.

* * *

Author's Note: Next chapter, the girls finally start on their struggles with learning actual ninja and kunoichi abilities. I know it's been a long time in coming, but I thought it would be more realistic if I set a lot of things up first. The girls needed to grow a great deal before tackling the challenges of Anko's lessons in being a kunoichi.


End file.
